RASPBERRIES WITH VANILLA AND LEMON
TARRAGON AND PINK PEPPERCORN VINEGAR
ELDERBERRY AND JUNIPER PRESERVE
FERMENTED BEETROOT WITH MUSTARD SEEDS AND DILL
THE CELLAR
As a girl, I hated the thought of going into the cellar – it was so dark down there, and I dreaded being asked to fetch something, which happened quite often. But there was a thrill to it that I can’t deny.
The open wooden steps were suspended on a steel frame. Heart pounding, I would skip down them fast, for fear of either falling through or being grabbed on the back of my foot by an imaginary hand. The walls in the hallway at the bottom were lined with liquor – shelf upon shelf of strange and exquisite alcohol in dusty bottles. Banana liqueur in a grass skirt, tequila with a sombrero lid, a cactus-shaped bottle – the luminous contents of which looked toxic – and, the most scary of all things down in the cellar, a large bulbous bottle with a whole lizard preserved in white spirit, like a Damien Hirst formaldehyde artwork, its beady white eyes peering out through a glass cage.
The larder, a small square room with no windows, was at the end of the hallway. The door was kept shut and a steel key hung in its lock at all times. The smell inside this room was so distinctive that it has lingered in my memory all this time, a mixture of concrete and thick orange rubber bands. A rope of dried figs hung on a nail at the entrance, to be pulled off when passing by. Now, whenever I eat a fig, the sugar-frosted skin melting into the sweet, fudgey flesh and crunch of seeds, it takes me right back to this spot, just inside the larder door of Omi’s Bavarian house.
The larder felt like a museum, a beautifully curated collection of preserved foods arranged on the shelves as they were bottled, by season. On the cold concrete floor sat blue and grey salt-glazed pots filled with pickled cucumbers and Rumtopf. Alongside these were brown stoneware jars of Preiselbeeren (mountain cranberries), sealed with a layer of rum – these would be spooned out to go alongside roast venison or to top semolina pudding.
The shelves in the larder positively groaned with fruit, vegetables, fish and meat, all potted up using various methods from jamming to pickling, fermenting to bottling, salting to smoking. A fine layer of dust covered everything down here. It felt almost eerie standing among the jars in the stillness, surrounded by all this fruit suspended in time.
Despite my memories of this house being distant, this place – the larder – is a vivid space in my mind. A room in a permanent state of flux, with jars coming and going. The shelves, a medley of colour and flavour, fascinated me, and it was my dream as a child to one day have rows of glass vessels filled with goodness like this in my life.
Well, reality means I don’t have a cellar of my own, or a larder for that matter, but a cupboard two tiers high that is home to all our preserves. I’m still dreaming.
BOTTLING
Given that we can buy any ingredient we desire at any time of year in the UK, be it in or out of season, it is hardly surprising that bottling is not commonplace in most households these days. In Germany, however, it is for many a chosen method of fruit and vegetable preservation, along with jam-making and pickling, despite the (super) markets also offering produce inharmoniously out of season.
We all know that ingredients taste best when they are in season, which is also why fruit and vegetables bottled at their peak are, for me, the best alternatives when the real raw deal isn’t around. It isn’t necessary to preserve food in today’s world like it was in the time of our great-grandmothers, and we at least have the luxury of choice, but there is something immensely satisfying about preserving fruit and vegetables in their entirety, and I find the act of bottling an enjoyable process from start to finish.
Bottling is the real deal. Although deep-freezing might be the quicker method of whole fruit preservation (I do this too), bottling is a choice I am happy to make every time, should circumstances – time and shelf space – allow. Generally once fruit has been frozen it loses much of its structural integrity, and once thawed out it tends to be mushy. I freeze fruit that I want to bake and cook with or use in smoothies, but when I want to serve a whole fruit out of season I turn to the jars on our shelves. I like to use sugar or honey syrups to preserve stone fruit, but pure apple juice works just as well in place of syrup for a healthier alternative.
In times past, whole days, sometimes even weeks, were set aside to bottle gluts of fruit and vegetables, but these days more people bottle for enjoyment and satisfaction than to preserve litres of produce. I often spend just 45 minutes bottling odd jars here and there; this allows room for more variety on our shelves too.
There is something celebratory about opening up a jar of fruit at the table; the anticipation and hiss of air as the seal is broken, and of course the contents of the jar, a double gift of fruit and syrup. Bottling fruit may take a little groundwork, but it is paid back tenfold the day you open and share what’s in the jar.
THE TECHNICAL BIT
There are many methods to choose from when bottling, but I always stick to the same one – what I call the simmering water-bath method, which is for me the easiest and the most suitable for simple home bottling; it also happens to be the method I grew up with.
When food within a jar is heated to a certain temperature for a certain length of time, it destroys potentially dangerous micro-organisms (bacteria, yeasts and moulds), sterilising the food within, while at the same time releasing air from the jar to create a vacuum and seal, blocking out the food-spoiling micro-organisms. Bottling makes food shelf stable and prevents further food spoilage.
Before you start the bottling process it is good practice to:
Check over all fruit and vegetables and discard anything that is bruised, mouldy or damaged.
Always wash all fruit and vegetables, even if they are organic.
Make sure all equipment used is clean and all jars and seals are sterilised.
STERILISING
The word ‘sterilising’ sounds scary and puts many people off, but it can be as easy as running jars and lids through the hot cycle of your dishwasher and then allowing them to steam dry – this is probably the simplest method, but I like to wash my jars in hot soapy water, then pop them into the oven on a tray at 140°C/120°C fan/gas 1 for 20 minutes.
To sterilise lids and tongs, put them into a saucepan of boiling water and boil for 10 minutes.
WHEN SHOULD I BOTTLE?
Fruit and vegetables should be bottled when they are in season and